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Fact check: Biden says Hamas doesn’t represent Palestinians. Is that true?

2023-10-24 Wolf Paul

Guest Article by Ryan Jones.[1], Israel Today[2]

US President Joe Biden, in addition to providing strong support to Israel, has been at the forefront of a campaign by Western leaders and media to convince everyone that Hamas doesn’t represent the Palestinian public in general.

Biden and others try to paint a picture of Hamas as an isolated, fringe movement that stands in opposition to the more “peaceful” leanings of the majority of Palestinians. But is that true?

On what evidence do Biden and the others base this assessment? It surely isn’t based on surveys of the Palestinian public, or on what the Palestinian masses taking to the streets are chanting.

And if Biden concludes that the masses of Israelis taking to the streets of Tel Aviv every week prior to this war to oppose judicial reform represent the Israeli public in general, then we must also conclude the same of the Palestinians.

So what are the Palestinians telling us?

On Friday morning, the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas, who Biden tried to meet with this week, published an official government document urging mosques under its jurisdiction to offer sermons that effectively call for the destruction of the Jews.

The document stressed in relation to the Gaza war that “our Palestinian people cannot raise a white flag until the occupation [sic] is removed and an independent Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital.”

When it spoke of the Palestinian people being unable to surrender, the PA did not make a distinction between Hamas and the rest of Palestinian society.

More to the point, Abbas’s government included in the official document the old antisemitic Islamic reference (from the Hadith):

“The hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims kill them, until the Jew hides behind a stone or a tree and the stone or the tree says, ‘O Muslim, O servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.’”

The Israeli organization Regavim called the document a clear declaration of war by the Palestinian Authority.

But if Abbas and his regime were hoping to score points by echoing Hamas, survey data shows they failed. The Palestinian public would still prefer to be ruled by Hamas.

Palestinian Media Watch reported on large Palestinian demonstrations in Ramallah, Hebron and Nablus on Wednesday during which the masses chanted: “We want Hamas!” and “The people want to take down [Abbas]!”

PMW also notes that recent student union elections held at Birzeit University in Ramallah and An-Najah University in Nablus were both won by Hamas.

And a July poll taken by the FIKRA forum of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy found that “57% of Gazans express at least a somewhat positive opinion of Hamas—along with similar percentages of Palestinians in the West Bank (52%) and East Jerusalem (64%).”

In other words, if elections were held today, Hamas would win. That’s why elections haven’t been held since 2006, and Abbas is now in the 18th year of a 4-year presidential term.

Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Thursday said that even if the international community prefers to close its eyes and plug its ears to the truth, Israelis need to be clear-headed.

Bennett tweeted:

“The truth must be told:

“Most of the residents of Gaza support Hamas, and many of them enthusiastically support the murder of innocent Jews.

“I have heard many times, and recently from various world leaders, the claim that the majority of the population of Gaza is held captive by Hamas and is generally peace-seeking.

“This is simply not true.

“The majority of the Gazan public supports Hamas and its mission to destroy Israel.

“Friends,

“Hamas relies on the broad support of the residents of Gaza.

“Without this support, Hamas could not exist.

“This is the bitter reality.

“One should not conclude from this that Israel will aim to harm civilians.

“This is not our way.

“But we must not lie to ourselves.

“You need to know the truth.”

It is true that Hamas does not represent every Palestinian. We personally know some Palestinian Arabs who are disgusted by Hamas, and who blame the terror group, not Israel, for all their troubles.

But the sad fact is that they are the minority.

Hamas is popular and powerful because the Palestinian public made it that way. The Islamist group could never have grown to what it is now without being planted in fertile soil.

Seventeen years ago, the Palestinian public even voted for Hamas, giving it a solid majority in the Palestinian Parliament. It’s true that half of all Palestinians today either weren’t alive or couldn’t vote back then. But as the survey data, university elections and mass demonstrations referenced above reveal, the next generation is more extreme than their parents.

Unfortunately, this is a problem that probably won’t be solved, even with the military defeat of Hamas in Gaza.

After World War II, the ideologies that fueled the Axis war campaign had to be rooted out at the educational level so that a new Germany and a new Japan could be established. That won’t happen here. Israel isn’t going to try to reeducate Palestinians and root out Islamist ideology from their schools and mosques. And if it tried, the world wouldn’t allow it.

And so we wait for the next ISIS to arise and the next war to come.

Note by Wolf Paul:

The same argument, expressed differently, goes as follows: The Palestinians in Gaza are not responsible for the crimes of Hamas; rather, they are victims. One could say this if there were significant resistance against Hamas in Gaza, if the citizens of Gaza were actively working to drive Hamas out of power. Certainly, there are some who are doing so, but one does not hear muc hfrom them. The silent (and partly cheering) majority in Gaza is just as responsible for the crimes of Hamas as the silent majority in Germany and Austria were complicit in the crimes of the Nazi era. Austria also indulged in playing the victim role for decades; it was only 45 years after the end of the war that the complicity of the Austrians was rightfully and long overdue acknowledged by Chancellor Franz Vranitzky.

This article was originally published by Israel Today.

The cover picture by Wisam Hashlamoun shows Palestinians in Hebron/West Bank demonstrating in support of Hamas and its crimes.

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Ryan Jones says about himself, “I am a Gentile Christian from the United States who has lived in Israel since 1996. That was the year that my local church suddenly became aware that Israel was still alive, and her biblical story and mission still ongoing.
It was in Jerusalem that I later met my wife, an Israeli-born Christian of Dutch background whose parents had come to the Jewish state for the same reasons, only several decades earlier.
My wife and I live in the Jerusalem-area town of Tzur Hadassah with our seven children, and we are active members in the local Messianic Jewish community.”
Ryan has served since 2007 as a writer and editor for Israel Today. Before that, he wrote for and was published in a number of other online and print publications dealing with Middle East current events.[↩]
Israel Today is a Jerusalem-based Zionist news agency founded in 1978 to serve you, as you read the Bible in one hand and the news in the other. We bring a biblical dimension to journalism on Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world. Israel Today appears in English, German and Dutch. Israel Today maintains a diverse staff of local journalists who live in the Land and therefore report from firsthand experience, offering a mix of information, interviews, inspiration and daily life in Israel.
ISRAEL TODAY’S MISSION is to be the definitive source for truthful, balanced, perspectives on Israel; and to provide timely news directly from Jerusalem – the focus of world attention. This is especially important in these times when we see prophetic events unfolding before our eyes.[↩]

The Gospel of Peace in a Time of Terror

2023-10-23 Wolf Paul

A Guest Contribution by Heinrich Arnold [1] from the Bruderhof Community.

Note: This article by a leader of the Bruderhof Community [2], Heinrich Arnold, provides a valuable challenge and contribution to our considerations on the complex topics of enemy love/self-defense/state violence/just war (bellum iustum), which has become extremely relevant due to recent events in Israel.[3]

The Gospel of Peace in a Time of Terror

A Bruderhof pastor asks how Christians should respond in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel.

By Heinrich Arnold
October 12, 2023

Last Friday, October 6, 2023, was a day of festivity in Israel, as throngs of people attended synagogues to celebrate the end of Sukkot and the beginning of Simchat Torah, “rejoicing with the Torah.” As this joyful holiday dawned on Saturday, unimaginable evil was unleashed. Thousands of rockets struck nearby towns as well as cities as far away as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Masked gunmen breached one of the most heavily surveilled borders in the world, massacring whole families still sleeping in bed, raping women, and rounding up an estimated 150 hostages.

By now, everyone has heard of the shocking atrocities perpetrated by Hamas in Israel over the last week. In the face of this horror, how should Christians respond?

The New Testament calls on us to mourn with those who mourn (Rom. 12:14). At a time like this, we should grieve with the people of Israel, especially the survivors of Hamas’s attack. And we should mourn too, with civilians in Gaza who are already suffering as collateral damage in the military response to it.

We must pray for peace. To say this may sound like a platitude. But if we believe in God’s power to intervene in history, prayer remains vital all the same.

Beyond grieving and praying, what else should we do?

From many corners, there are demands for stern action from world leaders. This is more than understandable because of the depth of fury, fear, and panic that Israelis feel at being violated in such terrible ways by an organization that has pledged to eradicate their country. The desire for a swift and severe reaction is at the core of our human response to evil. Like many, I have traveled to Israel and the West Bank on several occasions, most recently last year, and have made close friends on both sides of the long-standing conflict in the region. Many of them have spent years working for peace and dialogue in order to overcome the deep-seated hatred in their communities. When I’ve spoken with some of these in the last few days, they describe their incredible pain. They are living through a level of anger and dread of the future beyond anything I can imagine.

In my church community, the Bruderhof, one way that the terror has come close to home is the massacres that took place in kibbutz communities such as Kfar Aza and Be’eri, in which hundreds were killed, including toddlers and babies. The ties of friendship between the kibbutzim and the Bruderhof as two community movements go back ninety years. Though the Bruderhof is a Christian church and the kibbutzim are Jewish, we share a commitment to a communal way of life and have historical roots in common. Our hearts go out to these communities, and to all who are suffering the anguish of the past few days.

For my own part, as a pastor, I am not in a position to tell the governments involved what actions they should take. Nor do I have any say over how other world powers will respond. Government leaders will do what they do anyway. Let us pray that their decisions in the coming days and weeks are for the wellbeing and protection of all the people affected, especially the most vulnerable.

But though I don’t know what governments should do, I do know what followers of Jesus are called to do.

The only thing Christians can do with absolute certainty is to testify to Christ’s gospel of peace. Our calling is to pray for peace and for all the victims of violence, to refuse to support violence ourselves, and to be peacemakers. As members of his church on earth, we are to be an embassy in the present world of the future peaceable kingdom.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.” (Matt. 5:9). He taught: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:43–45).

We should deplore all war; we can never cheerlead for violence, however justified it may seem to be.

Christians should protest the barbarity of the attacks on Israel – the coldblooded targeting of civilians, the rapes, the massacre of children, women, and elders. We should speak up, too, against depriving civilians of water and electricity and the bombing of residential targets. We should deplore all war. That is our duty; to be silent is sinful. Especially in moments when the public mood grows bloody-minded and vindictive, we can never cheerlead for violence, however justified it may seem to be.

What force can overcome such evil? Again, Jesus teaches us the answer: Only love can truly win over enemies.

The apostle Paul echoed Jesus’ teaching on peacemaking, writing in his Letter to the Romans: “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’ On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

For Christians, it can be easy to lose sight of Jesus’ teachings about how to confront evil. It is tempting to reach instead for answers that seem more “realistic.” Yet hard-power responses to enmity are no guarantee of safety (witness the massive intelligence failure that left open the door to the Hamas attack); in fact, it’s easy to think of examples of how they can backfire. In any case, above and beyond considerations of effectiveness, Christians believe that Jesus’ way of peacemaking is the only truly realistic answer to evil.

We who profess Christ must testify confidently to his command to love rather than to trust in armed force. Christians must hold fast to his promise that his kingdom of peace will come, and that in it is the world’s hope. That is the future promised by the Psalmist:

Come and see what the Lord has done …
He makes wars cease
to the ends of the earth.
He breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”

The Lord Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress.

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Heinrich Arnold is the Senior Pastor of the Bruderhof Communities in the USA and worldwide. Heinrich is a great-grandson of the Bruderhof founder and is a father and grandfather, a teacher in the Bruderhof schools, and a medical practitioner. He regularly writes for the Bruderhof’s magazine, Plough Quarterly, and delivers a Gospel message every Sunday on his YouTube channel . He lives with his wife and family at the Woodcrest Bruderhof. Twitter: @JHeinrichArnold[↩]
The Bruderhof Community is a movement in the Anabaptist tradition that practices a communal sharing of goods, oriented towards the example of the early Christian community in Jerusalem. Its origins can be traced back to Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, who founded the first Bruderhof Community in Hesse in 1920. After being expelled by the National Socialists in 1937, they initially found refuge in the Principality of Liechtenstein and later in England. Today, there are Bruderhof settlements in Australia, the United Kingdom, Paraguay, the United States, Germany, and Austria (in Retz and Stein/Furth[↩]
I have posted two articles here on the blog in the days since the terrible Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023, and many more on Facebook, in which I emphasized Israel’s right to self-defense. Due to Hamas’ inhumane strategy of placing terror facilities (which are a legitimate target of Israeli attacks) in residential areas, hospitals, schools, etc., many civilians become victims in this legitimate defense. And I maintain: this ultimately does not change Israel’s right to self-defense.
I also know that there are quite a few people in the Israeli army (Israeli Defense Force, IDF) who believe in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. I know of such a family that has five children at the front, three of their own and two in-laws, and according to my understanding of the New Testament, this is legitimate.
However, there has been a tradition of pacifism in the church from the very beginning, i.e., since the apostles and early church fathers, the conviction that disciples of Jesus should not resort to any form of violence under any circumstances, even as soldiers or as policemen. This tradition somewhat faded into obscurity in the Middle Ages and was then rediscovered and embraced by the Anabaptists during the Reformation period (often referred to as the “Radical Reformation” or as the third wing of the Reformation, alongside Lutherans and Reformed). Today, the Anabaptist movement continues in the form of the Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites. The Bruderhof Community, which emerged in Germany during the interwar period of the 20th century, is very much in this tradition and was also very closely connected with the Hutterites for a while.
I consider this tradition to be very valuable, and especially today, as an important challenge and counterweight to currents in the church that are too uncritical of state violence.[↩]

Upgrade Windows 11 Home to Pro using an OEM key

2023-10-18 Wolf Paul

I have recently run into a problem which I finally solved and want to share the solution here.

Here is the problem:

When you purchase a computer with a Windows (10 or 11) Home license, and you want to upgrade to Windows Pro, normally you just purchase a Pro license key, go to “Settings–»System–»Activation“, click on “Change License Key” and enter your new Pro key. However, that only works with full-price, retail license keys, for example from the Microsoft store.

If you bought a (typically much cheaper) OEM or “system builder” key this will not work — you’ll simply be informed that the key is not valid. Supposedly Microsoft does not want OEM keys sold apart from a new machine and therefore refuses to accept it tu upgrade a computer which is already linked to a different Windows license. Even if you wipe Windows and re-install, your Pro license key will not work (because ever since Windows 10 licenses are stored in the cloud).

In other jurisdictions the sale of OEM licenses may indeed be illegal, but in Europe it is perfectly legal[1]), and there are vendors who sell OEM Windows 11 Pro licenses for under €50, so this is a very attractive alternative to a €150 or so retail license.

So how can you still use such an OEM license key to upgrade a computer with an existing Windows 11 Home license to Windows 11 Pro?

We need to uninstall the existing license or “divorce” the computer from it. To do this, open a Command Prompt window and type the following:

slmgr /upk

Then restart the computer. Once it has restarted, you can go to “Settings–»System–»Activation“, click on “Change Product Key” and enter your OEM key. Your Windows installation should now be activated as Windows Pro.

Some explanations of this procedure seem to suggest that you will lose all your data and settings; that did not happen to me when I carried out this procedure recently, but your mileage may vary.

I admit that I am a bit puzzled by the fact that there are plenty of vendors selling Windows 10 and 11 OEM licenses, at prices ranging from €20 to €50; it seems to me that Microsoft could keep a tighter reign on these licenses. The fact that they don’t, and that the “slmgr /upk” route works, suggests to me that somewhat begrudgingly Microsoft would rather that folks install these OEM licenses than that they switch to Linux (which I did with another computer recently, before I found this workaround).

__________

This is based on the principle of exhaustion of copyright, which is enshrined in EU law. This principle states that once a copyright holder sells a copy of a work, they have exhausted their right to control the further distribution of that copy. So once Microsoft sells an OEM license to a system builder, that system builder is free to resell the license to end users. Microsoft cannot prevent this from happening, even if the license is sold separately from the hardware, and it has to accept the licence at least once to activate Windows (it does not need to permit you to move the license to another computer, and indeed does not do so[↩]

Forgetting Backups can be Disastrous

2023-10-16 Wolf Paul

One of the YouTube channels I follow, Life Uncontained, just posted that their Apple Macbook suffered a fried mainboard, and since that Macbook has the SSD soldered to the mainboard they lost everything on there.

It is probably pointless to say this to hardcore Apple fans, but this is in part Apple’s fault: why solder the SSD? An M.2 SSD slot and SSD hardly takes more space, and the SSD is replaceable. I have a couple cheap mini Windows computers and netbooks which have the main storage soldered, but even Apple’s cheapest Macbook is pricey enough to make this inexcusable. When I originally posted this on Facebook someone commented that recent Dell notebooks also have the SSD soldered — they’re also more pricey than cheap netbooks. Shame on both manufacturers, and any others that do not at least provide an M.2 slot as well.

Apparently the “Life Uncontained” folks do backup everything on external hard disks, but not frequently enough, so they lost about a month’s worth of work. I would strongly encourage anyone in this situation (any computer with soldered storage) to use an external USB SSD to work on, rather than storing your stuff on the soldered storage — with USB 3.x this should be fast enough to work; and I would encourage everyone to get into the habit of leaving the computer on overnight with your backup drive attached, and when you are done for the day, start the backup job. By the morning everything should be backed up. A backup job, once set up, should run unattended while you sleep. And considering the minimal physical size and weight of an extra SSD, this should be possible even while you are travelling.

Apple provides TimeMachine to set this up with either external hard disks or SSD, or network shared storage. Windows has a similar feature called File History, and both programs can be set up to either more or less continuously back up files, or once a day, by setting the backup interval. Or you can simply start a copy job from your external work SSD to your external backup SSD

Fake Etymologies

2023-08-23 Wolf Paul

A few days ago I posted about the annoying habit of preachers and Bible teachers to illustrate their sermons or lessons with wholly made-up or insufficiently fact-checked stories or claims. but the problem is not limited to preachers and Bible teachers.

Today, on Facebook, I came across a supposed explanation of the origins of the word “hangover“, which is unfortunately entirely fictional.

The claim is that in Victorian England, there were establishments called “penny hangs” where, for a penny, a person could sleep while leaning over a rope. In the morning, the rope would be dropped, and the patrons would be “hungover.”

While it’s true that there were extremely low-cost lodging houses in Victorian England, and conditions in some were dire, there’s no solid historical evidence that “penny hangs” existed in the way the myth describes. Additionally, there’s no direct connection between this concept and the origin of the term “hangover” as it relates to the aftereffects of alcohol consumption.

The story makes for a compelling narrative, but it’s not the true origin of the word “hangover“, and it is because of its compelling nature rather than it’s (non-existent) factualness that it survives and keeps circulating, just as some sermon illustrations survive and are used again and again.

The actual origin of the word is much more mundane and prosaic:

The word has been in the English language since the late 19th to early 20th centuries.

The term “hang” in English has had many different meanings and uses throughout history. One of its meanings relates to the idea of something that remains or is left over. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “hangover” was used to describe something that “hangs over” from one time period to the next.

In the context of the unpleasant aftermath of alcohol, it’s as if the effects of the alcohol are “hanging over” into the next day. By the early 20th century, “hangover” was being used in print to specifically refer to the aftereffects of drinking.

Fake Sermon Illustrations

2023-08-12 Wolf Paul

I do get annoyed at preachers or Bible teachers who pull illustrations out of thin air for the spiritual points they are trying to make, or, if they have heard it from somewhere else, don’t bother to research and verify the accuracy of the illustration.

Here is an example:

A “right angle” (90 degrees) is right because it fits into the window or door frame. Becoming righteous is being reshaped to fit into God’s Kingdom …

In reality, a “right angle” is called “right” not because it fits into a window or door frame, but because it is derived from Latin “angulus rectus“, where “rectus” means upright, referring to the vertical perpendicular to a horizontal base line.

But a factual explanation of the origins of “right angle” would not have illustrated “fitting into God’s kingdom“, so he made something up.

The world already thinks we are foolish because of the cross; do we really have to confirm their poor opinion of us with such antics?

A Lovely Story But Wrong Conclusions

2023-08-11 Wolf Paul

Here is a lovely story that has circulated on Facebook for a while. Unfortunately it ends with a few questionable conclusions.

“Good morning!” said a woman as she walked up to the man sitting on the ground.

The man slowly looked up.

This was a woman clearly accustomed to the finer things of life. Her coat was new. She looked like she had never missed a meal in her life.

His first thought was that she wanted to make fun of him, like so many others had done before. “Leave me alone!” he growled. To his amazement, the woman continued to stand there, smiling — her even white teeth displayed in dazzling rows. “Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No,” he answered sarcastically. “I’ve just come from dining with the president. Now go away.”

The woman’s smile became even broader. Suddenly the man felt a gentle hand under his arm. “What are you doing, lady?” he asked angrily. “I said to leave me alone.”

Just then a policeman came up. “Is there any problem, ma’am?” he asked..
“No problem here, officer,” the woman answered. “I’m just trying to get this man to his feet. Will you help me?” The officer scratched his head. “That’s old Jack. He’s been a fixture around here for a couple of years. What do you want with him?” “See that cafeteria over there?” she asked. “I’m going to get him something to eat and get him out of the cold for awhile.”

“Are you crazy, lady?” the homeless man resisted. “I don’t want to go in there!” Then he felt strong hands grab his other arm and lift him up. “Let me go, officer. I didn’t do anything.” “This is a good deal for you, Jack,” the officer answered. “Don’t blow it.”

Finally, and with some difficulty, the woman and the police officer got Jack into the cafeteria and sat him at a table in a remote corner. It was the middle of the morning, so most of the breakfast crowd had already left and the lunch bunch had not yet arrived. The manager strode across the cafeteria and stood by the table. “What’s going on here, officer?” he asked. “What is all this, is this man in trouble?”

“This lady brought this man in here to be fed,” the policeman answered.
“Not in here!” the manager replied angrily. “Having a person like that here is bad for business.”

Old Jack smiled a toothless grin. “See, lady. I told you so. Now please let me go. I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”

The woman turned to the cafeteria manager and smiled. “Sir, are you familiar with Eddy and Associates, the banking firm down the street?” “Of course I am,” the manager answered impatiently. “They hold their weekly meetings in one of my banquet rooms.” “And do you make a good amount of money providing food at these weekly meetings?” “What business is that of yours?”

“I, sir, am Penelope Eddy, president and CEO of that company.” “Oh.” The woman smiled again. “I thought that might make a difference.” She glanced at the cop who was busy stifling a giggle. “Would you like to join us in a cup of coffee and a meal, officer?” “No thanks, ma’am,” the officer replied. “I’m on duty.” “Then, perhaps, a cup of coffee to go?” “Yes, ma’am. That would be very nice.”

The cafeteria manager turned on his heel, “I’ll get your coffee for you right away, officer.” The officer watched him walk away. “You certainly put him in his place” he said. “That was not my intent. Believe it or not, I have a reason for all this.”

She sat down at the table across from her amazed dinner guest. She stared at him intently. “Jack, do you remember me?”

Old Jack searched her face with his old, rheumy eyes. “I think so — I mean you do look familiar.” “I’m a little older perhaps,” she said. “Maybe I’ve even filled out more than in my younger days when you worked here, and I came through that very door, cold and hungry.”

“Ma’am?” the officer said questioningly. He couldn’t believe that such a magnificently turned out woman could ever have been hungry.

“I was just out of college,” the woman began. “I had come to the city looking for a job, but I couldn’t find anything. Finally I was down to my last few cents and had been kicked out of my apartment. I walked the streets for days. It was February and I was cold and nearly starving. I saw this place and walked in on the off chance that I could get something to eat.”

Jack lit up with a smile. “Now I remember,” he said. “I was behind the serving counter. You came up and asked me if you could work for something to eat. I said that it was against company policy.”

“I know,” the woman continued. “Then you made me the biggest roast beef sandwich that I had ever seen, gave me a cup of coffee, and told me to go over to a corner table and enjoy it. I was afraid that you would get into trouble. Then, when I looked over and saw you put the price of my food in the cash register, I knew then that everything would be all right.”

“So you started your own business?” Old Jack said.

“I got a job that very afternoon. I worked my way up. Eventually I started my own business that, with the help of God, prospered.” She opened her purse and pulled out a business card. “When you are finished here, I want you to pay a visit to a Mr. Lyons. He’s the personnel director of my company. I’ll go talk to him now and I’m certain he’ll find something for you to do around the office.” She smiled. “I think he might even find the funds to give you a little advance so that you can buy some clothes and get a place to live until you get on your feet. If you ever need anything, my door is always open to you.”

There were tears in the old man’s eyes. “How can I ever thank you?” he said.

“Don’t thank me,” the woman answered. “To God goes the glory. Thank Jesus, He led me to you.”

Outside the cafeteria, the officer and the woman paused at the entrance before going their separate ways.

“Thank you for all your help, officer,” she said.
“On the contrary, Ms. Eddy,” he answered. “Thank you. I saw a miracle today, something that I will never forget. And thank you for the coffee.”

God is going to shift things around for you today and let things work in your favor. If you believe, send it. If you don’t believe, delete it.
God closes doors no man can open & God opens doors no man can close. If you need God to open some doors for you, send this on.

So much for the story. I am sure these sorts of things happen when people are motivated by gratitude and the love of Jesus. One even hears of non-Christians doing kind things like this, out of gratitude or simple human compassion.

But the conclusion, “God is going to shift things around for you today and let things work in your favor,” is very questionable, and it can lead to disappointment when people do acts of kindness, and as is very likely and is borne out by lots of experience, things do not start to work in their favor, if things do not turn around for them today.

As followers of Jesus we are called to act with compassion and kindness without expecting anything in return. We are called to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, not so that they will do likewise to us.

History is full of accounts of saintly people, well known for their kindness to those around them, only to end up in prison or die a horrible death, Jesus himself being a prime example of this.

Yes, we are promised a reward, but it may not be, most likely will not be, today or even in this life. Rather, we follow Christ and live out His commandment to love our neighbors in gratitude for His salvation, and in the hope that one day — probably not today — He will say to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

And forwarding stories like this one on social media is not a magic “Open, Sesane!“ charm which will make God open doors for us. This sounds way too much like the chain letters of my childhood in the 1960s.

“This phone number is not assigned.”

2023-08-10 Wolf Paul

I just received a call from the phone number +43684937284.

The very friendly lady speaking German with a foreign accent said she was calling from Microsoft and asked if I owned a Microsoft computer. When I confirmed that I did, I was connected to an equally friendly gentleman, also speaking German with a slightly different foreign accent. He informed me that he was the chief technician at Microsoft and that there was an internet problem with my Microsoft computer, and all my data was being spied on.

When I objected, saying I didn’t have a problem, he replied, a bit less friendly, that I was a regular user and had no idea what I was talking about.

When I responded that I indeed knew what I was talking about, he hung up.

It’s a pity because I would have loved to ask him where Microsoft got my phone number from, and why they called me from an Austrian mobile phone number. I would also have liked to ask him, if it was true that all my data was being spied on, why Microsoft hadn’t already resolved this problem with their automatic updates. And I would have loved to ask why the “chief technician” at a huge company like Microsoft was making customer support calls. I never got the chance.

Oh, and before I forget: I tried calling the number back because I found it very rude and impolite of the guy to just hang up on me. The result: “This phone number is not assigned.”

Inerrant Bible, inerrant Bible Translations?

2023-08-09 Wolf Paul

In a recent Facebook-Post [1] someone claimed that none of the prominent Evangelical authors and teachers, such as Voddie Baucham, John MacArthur, Paul Washer, Alistair Begg, etc,, who claim to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, are able or willing to point to any translation of the Bible, in any language and of any age, nor to any manuscripts in the original languages, which actually are that inerrant Bible.

He also claimed that the “Critical Text” of the Bible, which scholars have re-constructed from thousands of manuscript fragments in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek as the closest approximation to the text of the original manuscripts (which have not survived), is “Vatican supervised”, as are all the current translations of the Bible which are based on it—whatever that means, other than being an attempt to discredit them.

I don’t know what exactly the poster’s agenda or message is (he might be a “King-James-Only”[2] type), but his post reveals both ignorance of the nature of languages and translations, as well as a massive misunderstanding of the doctrine of the inerrancy of Scripture as it is understood by all serious scholars, whether they subscribe to it it or not:

Until the second half of the 20th century conservative Protestants[3] generally held to the doctrine of the Verbal, Plenary Inspiration of Scripture[4]. Then, in the wake of the fundamentalist–modernist controversy in the Presbyterian Church in the USA and the publication of a series of articles called The Fundamentals, re-iterating the traditional, conservative positions on a number of Christian doctrines. Fundamentalist came into use for those who held to these traditional beliefs. Because of the birth of the movement in a controversy, Fundamentalists tended to be pretty rigid and belligerent, and in the 1940s and 1950s some fundamentalist Christians tried to formulate their views in a more nuanced, irenic, and intellectually robust way; they came to be known as E.vangelicals. During the mid-twentieth century, in the face of continued challenges to traditional views on the historicity, reliabiity, and authority of the Bible, some Evangelicals felt the need to “fine tune” the doctrine of Scripture. The result was the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy (ICBI) meeting held in Chicago in October 1978, and the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

The Chicago Statement affirms the belief that the Bible, in its original manuscripts, is without error or contradiction in all matters it addresses, including matters of history, science, and theology.

Just like the earlier doctrine the claim to inerrancy applies only to the original autographs, the original manuscripts written by the human authors themselves, which we don’t have. It applies to the thousands of manuscript fragments which we do have (comparatively many more than for any other text of antiquity) only to the extent that these are accurate and reliable copies of the original text.

The science or art of reconstructing the original test, or at least the best possible approximation of the original test, from the manuscript fragments we have as well from ancient translations such as the Septuagint[5], is called textual criticism; the resulting Hebrew and Aramaic (for the Old Testament) and Greek (for the New Testament) text is referred to as the Critical Text, and most contemporary translations, in English as well as other languages, are based on that Critical Text which reflects the consensus of the majority of scholars. The Critical Text is, of course, not completely static; if new manuscript fragments are found, or new historical artifacts are found which increase or knowledge of Ancient Near East culture, improvements can be made. Neither are translations of the text completely static, eben without any shift of conviction on the part of the translator(s): if there are textual improvements, or a few years of using a translation make clear that a certain phrase leads to misunderstandings, translations are revised.

Which brings us to translations. Scripture itself does not even mention translations of the Scriptures into other language, thus anyone who professes belief in sola scriptura should not be making dogmatic statements about the authority of any translation. Not only for this reason no serious Christian theologian, whether he subscribes to inerrancy or not, would claim either verbal inspiration and infallibility or inerrancy for a translation. Both doctrines only apply to the original autographs in the original languages; translations, like manuscripts in the original languages are infallible or inerrant only to the extent that they faithfully reproduce the original autographs.

Regardless of how one characterizes the original manuscripts or their copies, anyone who claims infallibility or inerrancy for a translation ignores the inherent limitation of any translation which is due to the nature of languages. Since there is no one-to-one equivalence of either words or grammatical constructs between different languages, whether they share the overall culture (i.e. West European languages), or whether their cultures are separated by geography (i.e Europe and the Middle East) and by thousands of years.) Thus, all translation work involves judgment calls on the meaning of words and phrases, and of course these judgments reflect the convictions and biases of the translator.[6]

Given all this, how can we rely on the Bible or anything it says?

First, for the Christian, there is another old doctrine of the church: the belief that not only inspired Scripture, but also preserves it, in such a way that despite lost manuscripts, copyist’s errors and all the problems with translation, since God gave the Bible as revelation of everything we need for salvation and a life pleasing to Him, He has preserved it and still preserves it in such a way that we can know what He wants us to know.

Second, for the one who is not yet a Christian, confidence in the text of the Bible can be inspired by the fact that the text of the Bible is extremely will documented. For the New Testament, we have close to 6000 Greek manuscripts or manuscript fragments, including whole or partial copies of the New Testament books, dating from the 2nd to the 16th centuries. Also, there are numerous manuscripts or fragment of Latin other ancient translations that contain portions or whole books of the Bible. For the Old Testament or Hebrew Sciptures, the primary textual tradition is known as the Masoretic Text, which dates to the early Middle Ages, but it is based on even older textual traditions. The Hebrew Bible has been in continual use as the holy book of Judaism, and the reliability of the Jewish scribes in accurately preserving the text has been confirmed by the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls between 1947 and 1956. All of this is far better documentary evidence than for any other ancient document. For the Christian believer this is, of course, evidence for the doctrine of the Preservation of Scripture.

When it comes to translations, with the exception of some clearly partisan translations such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation, all translations, both older and newer, theach the same Gospel. Yes, there are differences between translations, but they are really significant only if one wishes to base a doctrine or teaching on a single word in a single Bible verse—an absolute theological no-go. All the major doctrines of the Christian faith are based on broader evidence, and can be found in almost any translation of the Bible, including Justification by Faith in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Bibles.

Personally, I believe that the Bible is God’s revelation of himself in words, and thus the words are important, and I hold to the doctrine of verbal, plenary inspiration of the Bible, which is infallible in what it teaches. However, not every detail in the Bible is part of what it teaches; thus slight differences in the narrative portions of the Bible which do not affect its teaching are of no concern to me.

There are those who believe that if the Bible is inspired it must be 100% correct down to the minutest detail, and that is how they interpret the doctrine of inerrancy. But this ignores the fact that God used human authors to write down His revelation, human authors who were not robots but retained their human personalities. Part of their humanness is varying recollections, and unless these variances would have corrupted the teaching, the revelation, God clearly did not see fit to prevent them That does not take away from the Bible’s reliability and infallibility, which only apply to what it teaches.

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https://www.facebook.com/groups/1567027963614699/permalink/3478211135829696/[↩]
King James-Onlyism adherents believe that the KJV is the only accurate and reliable translation of the Bible. They argue that it was divinely inspired in its English translation and that other modern translations lack the same level of divine guidance. They argue that the KJV is not only divinely inspired but also perfectly preserved and free from any errors or mistakes. They believe that God has supernaturally safeguarded the accuracy of the KJV throughout history.)1 In part this is based on the belief that the Textus Receptus (Received Text), a Greek text based on the Greek New Testament produced by Erasmus of Rotterdam in 1516, is the only divinely inspired text of the New Testament, which is belied by Erasmus’ own characterization of his work. Consequently, KJV-Onlyists consider contemporary translations of the Bible to be corrupted to a greater or lesser degree.[↩]
The terms evangelical and fundamentalist, as they are used today to describe certain groups or movements within conservative Protestantism, didn’t come into existence until the early (fundamentalism) or mid (evangelicalism) 20th century.[↩]
Verbal, Plenary Inspiration: God guided the human authors in such a way that they wrote exactly what God intended them to write. This view emphasized that every word, not just the general ideas or concepts, was inspired. This inspiration is plenary, i.e. full: every part of Scripture was equally inspired by God, including historical narratives, poetry, prophecy, and doctrinal teachings. As such, Scripture is infallible, meaning it is incapable of teaching falsehood or error on matters to which it speak.

This doctrine upholds the reliability and trustworthiness of the Bible for matters of faith and practice. Scripture is the ultimate authority for matters of faith and Christian living; it is the final standard by which all teachings and beliefs should be evaluated.[↩]
The Septuagint, abbreviated as LXX from the Roman numeral 70, is a translation of the Old Testament into Greek, produced by Jewish exiles in Alexandria between 250 B.C. and 100 A.D.[↩]
The problem of bias in a translation tends to be minimized for translations done by a reasonably broad committee, and more pronounced by translations done by individuals.[↩]

Bible Translations

2023-07-12 Wolf Paul

In a recent Facebook conversation Chad Bird was asked to recommend a Bible translation. Here is his reply:

«For many years, I have been using the NASB (New American Standard Bible). It leans more toward the literal in translation, thus making it harder to read at times. A more readable translation is the ESV (English Standard Version), which is commonly used in many denominations. Every translation is imperfect, of course, because one can never bring 100% of a language into another language. But those two are the ones I use the most. If you are looking for an even more readable translation, you might check out the CSB (Christian Standard Bible).»

For what it’s worth, I fully endorse this recommendation. For an added perspective I would add the CJB (Complete Jewish Bible) to these three.

And as one who has done a lot translation work I would underline this sentence in Chad’s answer:

«Every translation is imperfect, of course, because one can never bring 100% of a language into another language.»

That is so important, yet so easily forgotten.

As for Bible translations I would warn against the currently popular Passion Translation comes to mind which is very much a paraphrase in the service of a specific, highly controversial theological perspective[1], and of course the Jehovah’s Witnesses New World Translation which is likewise biased in the service of a particular theological system.

In general, more mainstream paraphrases such as The Living Bible or The Message are o.k. and can be helpful as long as one does not lose sight of the fact that they are just that, a paraphrase rather than a translation.

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New Apostolic Reformation. I highly respect some of the proponents of this movement while considering others equally higly problematic.[↩]